


Touch

by cirkutry



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flangst?, Fluff, TW: Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 20:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16456418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirkutry/pseuds/cirkutry
Summary: Erik is accidentally shot. The wound gets infected shortly after. Christine takes care of him.





	Touch

The process of stripping him isn’t difficult, or in my panic, it doesn’t seem so. I’m not precise as I cut the shirt off of him, right down the back. I pull it off by the sleeves. 

 

His wound runs the length of his side. A crusting, deep graze that’s raw red against white skin.

 

He’s delirious, and so he doesn’t even notice when the shirt’s off. Then the trousers, then the underthings, though my hands quake as I undo the strings. Be brave, I tell myself. Have it done with quickly, just don’t look. 

 

But I stop when the knot is undone and look up at him sheepishly, wanting him to stop me.

 

My mouth goes dry. “Do you want me to—”

 

His hands flex spasmodically at his sides and his teeth chatter. He seems to be mumbling, _Just take it off. Just take it off_. I take a deep breath and pull the trunks off him, averting my eyes even after I’ve glimpsed what lies between his legs for the first time. 

 

I tell him in a small, strained voice, “Come now, stand up. I’ll help you,”

 

With a groan, he lumbers to his feet, and he doesn’t bother to cover himself.  I don’t blame him, obviously. There are more pressing matters at hand, but my face starts to burn.

  
I consider taking a step back, afraid of touching him, afraid I’ll awaken something in him and he’ll stop being a gentleman. Or I’m afraid I’ll do something offensive. He’s too close, and there’s too much to see, parts of him I’d never considered existed beneath his slacks and it makes me ill to be near it.

 

His knees nearly start knocking together with the exertion, and he brings one hand down to vainly hide himself as the other grips the bedpost. I rush to help him. 

 

Every inch of him is hot to touch. Draped over me as he is, I cannot help but notice. I find my hand pressing firmly against his side as it’s hooked around his tapered waist, trying to drag him towards the washroom. I find myself running my hand along his ribs, curiously tempted by the look of them. It’s like a piece of leather stretched across a ribbed washboard, and each time I do it his muscles tense and quiver. It’s a pleasant sensation, and a startling discovery to make; that any part of Erik could be so sensuously  _ nice _ to touch, but I reject that thought. 

 

It’s wrong, it’s hideous. I shouldn’t. We both say nothing. We’re in a position too intimate to comment on. 

 

When I close the door behind us, he shoves me away and steps into the tub by himself. 

 

“Wait a moment-” I gasp, but he doesn’t care.

 

I can only watch with my nails between my teeth as he sinks into the hot water and gives a hiss as it meets his wound.

 

I fumble around for towels, folding them so he can rest his head on the lip.

 

“Stop doing that,” I say, reaching for the soap and none-too-kindly slapping his hand away as he tries to take it. “You’re hurt, you can’t wash yourself, so stop acting like a child,”

 

His voice is strained, and he has the decency to be embarrassed. “You don’t have to,”

 

“No, I don’t  _ have to _ , but I don’t want you bleeding out and dying because you don’t want to be helped, you fickle- ” 

 

The words die like doused fire. I bite the inside of my mouth and rub the soap into a cloth. I spend too long staring at the wound on his side, blood weeping from it and mixing with the water in tiny red ribbons.

 

I hear his breath whistle through his nose as I touch the gash.

 

“I’m sorry,” I say it over and over. One apology doesn’t seem to be enough, and yet the more I say it, the more it loses its meaning. Every so often, like an involuntary twitch of the eye- “I’m sorry”. 

 

I look below, where I shouldn’t. I don’t say I’m sorry when that happens. 

 

His body doesn’t seem like the same shape it was months ago, as I stared at him from across a room, across a table, behind a mask. Back then he was impossibly tall, a shadow with no body beneath the suit. He was just shapes that looked like gangling limbs, like a neck, if I even saw his neck above collar and cravat. He took every absurd measure to cover himself. 

 

There was much to wonder about when I was with him. Things I stored in some private corner of my head and never revisited because they were impolite or downright crass; does he eat? Does he relieve himself? Does he cry? Can he- but no, I stopped myself there. Even that thought didn’t deserve to be kept, not even in my head. 

 

I had thought...well, I’m not sure. That he was made of stone, or that he was a eunuch and there was simply nothing to wonder about. That he was, in bald language, not human.

 

He had all the human qualities of a shadow on the wall. He moved, but he wasn’t truly alive in the way I was. 

 

But shadows don’t  _ bleed _ like this.

 

He’s possessed of a body that doesn’t seem so horribly emaciated, now that I can actually look at it. It’s not like a man who has been starved, all shrunken and bow-legged, a narrow and breakable collection of poultry bones. This is not the result of sickness or malnutrition, it seems. His protruding bones are held in place by a strong, tall frame of whip-thin muscles and sinew. This thinness comes from the same thing that afflicts his face, I’m sure of it.

 

I have to let him take the cloth and clean the more intimate parts of himself, but my hands still remember the soft leather of his skin, the bones beneath. My heart pounds in the tips of my fingers.

 

Ugly is not the right word. It was never the right word for him, no matter how many times I may have thought it. Ugly implies disgusting. This is a different ugly. Ugly, as in, morbid, a curious thing. You shouldn’t find it so, but for some reason you cannot articulate, like the urge to press on a bruise, to poke at the tender jelly of your eye, you want to  _ touch _ . 

 

How I want. And I want, and I want, and I cannot have. I remember his words, as he hit his fists on the floor in anguish- “ _ You don’t love me! You don’t! You don’t! You don’t! _ ”

  
His chest rises and falls. I watch, and I want so badly I tremble, but I do not scream like he did. You don’t love him, you don’t. You don’t. You don’t.

 

I was terrified of him not two months past, and here I am hungering over him when he’s at his lowest. I need—and it surly feels like a need—to know how the ridge of bone around his nose feels, how warm the blazing shells of his ears are, the deep hollows of his cheeks. Look all you want at someone’s face, you’ll never know if its soft or pliant, cold or warm, if the skin of his face is just as soft as the skin of his sides or if it’s dry like parchment.    
  
"Are you in pain?" I ask, using it as an excuse to put my hand against that soft concave in the middle of his chest. His heart pulses under my hand, abnormally quick.   
  
His eyes stare at my hand. "No. No, not quite," 

 

"The shot your Persian friend gave you- he said it should start working within the hour. He said I should get you into bed,"   
  
"He says a lot of things, doesn't he?"   
  
"Erik,"    
  
"He has always been like that, as if he's my mother,"   
  
“He cares about you,”

 

“Oh, of course he does,”

 

“I-  _ care  _ about you. Deeply,” I run my hand down the breadth of his chest and his legs spasm under the water.    
  
"Don't do that," He gasps, agitated. Despite how much pain he must be in, he curls in on himself, away from me.    
  
I snatch my hand away. "Why? Did I hurt you?"   
  
The bone cage that is his chest expands and shrinks, and I’m hypnotized. The skin of his neck has broken out into a rash, irregular blotches of red paint on an off-white canvas.

  
"No, no, _ no _ . I can’t stand it. Don't touch me," He gasps, attempting to roll over and away from me.   
  
I put my hand back on his chest to keep him in place. "Stop that! You're going to tear your stitches,"   
  
His fingers clamp on my wrist, tight but not enough to hurt. "You don't understand-"   
  
"What don't I understand?" I say, the words forcing themselves up like held bile. 

 

There’s a beat of silence after that. He stares, and I genuinely cannot tell if he loves me or hates me or is truly ashamed. Then his eyes shut tightly and his head lolls back and forth. "No. You mustn't—take your hand away, for the love of God,”

  
The word, and what a divine word it is, slips past me.

 

“No,” I do it again. I run my hand down his chest. 

 

He shivers, his eyes roll back and shut.

  
There’s a surge of something in me at that sight. Like a rush of cold water, or a spark on bare skin. My fingers trace each rib, travel through that dip in the center of his chest upwards. I catch my bottom lip between my teeth as he breathes a sharp gasp. Not from pain. Perhaps from pain, because what it must be like to be touched after a lifetime. And I’m perhaps the only person to touch this part of him. I want to do something, for suddenly a single hand on his chest isn’t enough.

 

"Erik is a vile man. He has terrible thoughts, did you know that? Do you know what he dreams about at night, Christine?”   
  
My hand, possessed by some will that's not my own, goes to his neck, feels the apple bob as he swallows. The cords pull taut.   
  
"What does he dream about?"   
  
"This, and more. Much more, but he'd never—he'd never act on those terrible dreams," He says frantically, opening his eyes. He looks taken aback by me looking at him. My hand flies unabashed to his cheek, the skin ruddy and hot.

  
“Answer my question,” I say.

 

“He didn’t believe you when you said you want him to live,”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because how could she do that for her Erik? Why didn’t she leave him to die, like he deserved?”

 

The answer seems ridiculously clear to me now;  _ because I care about what happens to you _ . But it seems awfully blunt, awfully open-ended, awfully close to  _ because I love you _ . 

 

“I wish I had an answer to give you,” I lie.

 

He nods, looking straight ahead with pursed lips.

 

He glances sidelong at me, a look which could set me on fire in my current state. “Don’t fool yourself. You’re as heavenly as they come,”

 

“And that’s the heart of this matter; I cannot save you,”

 

“Cannot save me?” 

 

I hate his eyes. I hate how they were the first things I ever saw of him when he opened the mirror, and now they’re an irrevocable memory, two points of light like distant stars, stuck behind my lids when I go to sleep. I hate how they made him seem like an angel for just that second longer.

 

“You daft man!” I hiss at him. “I cannot save your soul. I can save you from illness, and bullet wounds, but I cannot save you as a man. I can help. God above believe me, I’ve tried to help you, but you refuse me,”

 

“No, I’m not refusing you! I love you, don’t you know this?”

 

“Then you should let me help you,”

 

He blinks at me, eyes dark and almost lucid. I stare back, less from my own will and more from a sudden instinct to hold still, afraid I’ll scare him away, though to where he’d run, I’ve no idea.

 

“I didn’t want you to die alone. That was the last thing I wanted,”

 

Time ceases to be. It’s like a sickness, the feeling that overcomes me, that pushes me to let my other hand snake over the lip of the tub and join its partner on his chest, caressing, simply feeling his warmth and his heartbeat.

 

At first, he seems to be fighting to lean away from my touch, a losing battle. Slowly, over the course of what seems like hours, we lean closer, closer, until our foreheads touch. I breathe through my nose, gently running my fingers across his cheekbones, curling them around his head and through the soft patch of hair, until we close our eyes and the lashes brush against each-other.

 

I am no longer me as my lips close over his. Thin and scarred, but they’re lips, and they can’t help the way they move against mine for that moment, because they’re human lips and they need to be kissed, no matter how clumsy, how inexperienced they are. Slowly I seek, trying to coax his mouth open to seek more of that warmth, but he pulls away, back hitting the tub hard.

 

In a voice so broken I don’t recognize it, he says, “Never do that again,”

 

It feels as if my very soul is being torn from its moorings. The strange thing is, I manage not to show it.

 

“Oh,” I breathe, lips still tingling.

 

I hoist his great height from the tub and wrap him in a quilt. He’s too exhausted to dress he says, so I manage to bring him to the bedroom’s fireplace and set him in a chair. 

 

“How are you feeling? Has the medicine started working?”

 

“Asking so many questions,” He sighs, eyes nothing but glimmering slits as he stares into the flames. “You’re very beautiful though, so I suppose it’s fine,”

 

I press my hand to his forehead. It’s soaked with sweat, but the skin is hardly hot enough to burn anymore. A wave of relief washes over me.

 

“Your fever’s broke,”

 

He doesn’t seem to hear me. “Do we have tea? I could have...sworn...we had some left,”

 

“You’re delirious. Let’s get you into bed. Do you want to put anything on?”

 

He struggles to his feet and stands for a moment before the fire, simply looking at it. My eyes catch sight of the top of his body, the top of his chest exposed, skin white as fresh ivory.

 

His eyes, which I can see glinting vivid green at their center like a cat’s, turn on me. “I keep forgetting you’re here. I keep thinking you’ve disappeared until I look over at you,” 

 

“Of course I’m still here,” I say, slipping an arm around him and steering him towards the bed. He falls onto it, feebly pulling the covers over himself.

 

I smooth his halo of dark hair back into place. He’s trembling. 

 

“I love you,” He says. He’s said it so many times, but for some reason I flinch.

 

“I know,” I say, resting my hand on his damp forehead. “Go to sleep,”

 

“Don’t leave me,”

 

“Erik, I should really get some rest. I’m just down the hall,”

 

He blinks through a haze of tears, split lips moving before any words come out. 

 

“Lie with me,” He says, and my heart leaps into my throat before I realize what he means.

 

“It’s improper to share a bed,” 

 

“Oh,” He sighs. “Oh, forgive me then. I’m sorry,” His eyes close. “I love you,”

 

I begin to mouth the words  _ I love you too  _ before I catch myself.

 

“Yes, I know,” I say, feeling as heartless as stone.

 

I stare at him as he falls asleep, looking as peaceful as I’ve ever seen him. I pull the covers around his shoulders. His hand reaches out and feebly grabs my wrist. He murmurs something.

 

“Erik?” I whisper.

 

He’s not asleep, not entirely. His brow wrinkles.

 

“I’m sorry for shouting at you. I wasn’t being patient. I understand you are in a lot of pain. I’m just very tired is all. And I’m sorry I kissed you. That was indecent. It—I won’t do it again,”

 

He groans. “Too many of you talking at once,” 

 

He’s corpse-pale, balding, and the top of his lip shines with sweat. The thought formulates before I can second-guess it; _ I don’t care _ .

 

I pull off my stockings, undo my busque and shimmy out of a hundred layers of underskirts before slipping into bed beside him. I don’t pull the covers over myself, I lay atop them, staring at his back, tracing the serpent of his spine with my eyes. I promise myself it’s only for a moment, to make him feel safe.

 

I don’t remember falling asleep. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title for this fic: Christine Doesn't Keep Her Hands to Herself


End file.
